Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Discussing Copyright, Creative Commons, IP and Education

Steve Hargadon facilitated a great conference call this afternoon about copyright issues in education on his Talkshoe Channel for Classroom 2.0. The recorded conversation is available now (15 minutes after the conversation ended) as a mp3 file. I had never participated in a TalkShoe audio conference before, and I really liked it– especially the way the chat was threaded horizontally by participant during the conference. This is a screenshot at the end of the discussion:

TalkShoe call - very cool!

Yesterday I wrote about my new ability to “BYOB” to events (“bring your own bandwidth.”) Today’s location in downtown Oklahoma City, where I finished a meeting just prior to this online discussion, provided another case in point about why BYOB capabilities can be wonderful. The bandwidth available at the hotel (The Crown Plaza on Northwest Expressway) was pretty slow:

Hotel Bandwidth

On the AT&T 3G cell phone network, however, my bandwidth was excellent:

Bandwidth available at OKC Crown Plaza Hotel on AT&T 3G Network - much faster than local WiFi!

I did have a “USB port challenge” during the call however, which can be remedied by a small USB hub which I see I now need to purchase. There wasn’t enough room on my MacBook to plug in my Platronics headset next to the Sierra Wireless 3G USB adapter! As a result, I had to use earbuds and my built-in microphone. The configuration still worked and I was able to participate in the conversation with both text chat and audio, but I needed to be “muted” and “unmuted” when I talked because of some background noise in the hotel.

This conference call about copyright issues hosted by Steve was a great conversation. Steve has shared out on his wiki some main summary points of the discussion, as well as a link to the chat log which includes multiple resources about intellectual property that were shared during the text chat. My main contributions to the conversation were suggesting that discussions about Internet Safety need to be extended to the realm of “digital citizenship,” and the iSafe model of involving students as teachers in schools is one that could be replicated. I heartily agree that discussions need to move beyond the “fear factor” when it comes to Internet safety, cyberbullying, copyright, etc.

I will be co-presenting at COSN in Washington D.C. on panel about copyright and intellectual property issues on March 10th. The session is scheduled for 1-2 pm, and is titled “Remix & Reuse: What Educators Need to Know about Creative Commons, Copyright, Fair Use, and Intellectual Property.” I’ll be updating my resources on copyright and intellectual property issues in advance of that session. They are posted on http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/copyright. I’ll also be presenting the last week of February at NCCE in Seattle on this topic. My top recommendations for educators in terms of copyright resources currently are:

Julie Linder of EFF was one of the other people on the call today, and emailed me prior to the call with links to some excellent resources which EFF has already created on the subject of copyrights and intellectual property issues for educators and students. These are:

Many thanks to Steve Hargadon for facilitating this excellent conversation! I hope it will bear some fruit. (I strongly suspect it will.) If you are interested in joining in “live” or asynchronously with additional Classroom 2.0 conversations on TalkShoe, check out the “Live Conversations” page on the Classroom 2.0 wiki.

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3 responses to “Discussing Copyright, Creative Commons, IP and Education”

  1. A. Mercer Avatar

    More from a copyright point of view can I point out:
    http://itselementary.edublogs.org/2007/11/16/its-elementary-show-10-copyright-its-the-law/

    A discussion with attorney Aimee Bissonette I had at It’s Elementary. The most interesting point that came up was about whether teachers should “impose” creative commons licensing on students. Aimee says, “no” and I had also come to that conclusion. I think sometimes in our rush to embrace commons (which I love and use for my own work), we trample on our students intellectual property rights.

  2. Wesley Fryer Avatar

    I agree we shouldn’t impose CC on anyone, profs, teachers, or students. I think we need everyone to be aware of their options, however, and the benefits of publishing on the open web. That is a topic I’m tackling in my keynote for the Missouri Distance Learning Conference this summer….